Canadian companies have been licensed to make and sell cocaine. Here’s why

Canadian companies have been given approval by the country’s federal health agency to produce and sell cocaine, seemingly reflecting Health Canada’s bid to improve safety conditions for the country’s drug addicts. This also comes after a radical policy shift to address an opioid overdose crisis which has killed thousands.

In a statement, a Canadian biosciences company, Sunshine Earth Labs, on Thursday (March 2) said that they have been licensed to produce and sell cocaine, a month after a similar licensing arrangement was offered to the British Columbia-based Adastra Labs.

“We will evaluate how the commercialization of this substance fits in with our business model at Adastra in an effort to position ourselves to support the demand for a safe supply of cocaine”, said the chief executive Michael Forbes of the British Columbia-based company. The labs, which until now focused on cannabis extracts, are also allowed to produce and sell hallucinogens, psilocybin and psilocin which are more commonly known as magic mushrooms.

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The Sunshine Labs said that they received permission from the federal health agency to “legally possess, produce, sell and distribute coca leaf and cocaine” in November, last year. This was in addition to MDMA (ecstasy), morphine and diacetylmorphine (heroin). “We are incredibly proud of the progress we have made in the last year, said Donovan Edwards, CEO of Sunshine Earth Labs, in a statement.

He added, “we have been proactively pursuing amendments to our Dealer's License to include MDMA, coca leaf, cocaine, opium, morphine, and diacetylmorphine to position ourselves as a legitimate safer supply partner. We will continue to work on securing global trade relationships to import ethically sourced medical products for safer supply.”

Notably, the move is in line with a criminal code exemption which was granted by the government to the aforementioned Canadian province for a three-year pilot project which aims to destigmatize drug use which they believe stops people from seeking help, reported AFP. It also made British Columbia only the second jurisdiction in North America to decriminalise hard drugs following the United States’ Oregan in 2020.

Out of the more than 30,000 overdose-related deaths recorded across Canada, British Columbia accounted for over 10,000 since 2016 when it declared a public health emergency and was dubbed as the epicentre of the crisis. The number also represented nearly six people dying each day from toxic drug poisoning out of the five million residents of the province.

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